In the time that lesser action stars take to crack their knuckles, Jason Statham in
Safe apologizes to a grieving mother; spews righteous anger at a bookie; weeps over the
death of his wife at the hands of Russian mobsters; shoulders the indignities of homelessness; and,
toughest of all, doubles over with maniacal laughter when he is caught penniless at a bodega. The
thing is, he does these things well — all but the New York accent he tries to adopt.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have much occasion to use it. Outside of the opening sequence, dialogue
doesn’t play a starring role in
Safe, a bruising, beastly action flick from writer-director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) that kills.

Statham’s character, an ex-cop named Luke, does quite a lot of the liquidating, but he is a
deeply moral assassin. As such, he invites and holds audience affection for all 95 minutes that it
takes him to right the universe.

Aside from Luke, the other protagonist and shining moral paragon is Mei (Catherine Chan), a
young math genius snatched from the streets of Nanjing and taken to the States to count and
calculate for a Chinese gambling kingpin. After about a year, she is handed an especially long
number to memorize — and then gets snatched by Russians.

Somehow, she escapes and winds up on the same subway platform as a despondent Luke.He’s poised
to fling himself in front of the D train when he spots Mei, crushes the men in hot pursuit and
thereafter devotes his life to saving her and defeating the bad guys.None of this bears much
resemblance to the real world, but the violence crunches, the editing snaps and the humorous
one-liners pop at well-timed junctures.